


Phantasms and Memories

by BMP



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: 2K Round-up Challenge, Gen, Old West
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:41:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BMP/pseuds/BMP
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I ain’t sayin’ this is the way it happened.  An’ I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t.  That’s what happens when irresponsible folks go an’ leave the backstory wide open.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantasms and Memories

**Author's Note:**

> These characters do not belong to the author (but if it were our sandbox, we’d let YOU play in it…) That said, this story was written purely for self entertainment and no money is being made, has changed hands, or has been paid out for the contents therein. Special thanks to V for beta-ing, criticizing, and cheerleading. Special thanks to GSister, since without her patience and insistence, I never would have posted anything.
> 
> ~Constructive Criticism will be passed on to the author  
> ~Flames will be used to toast marshmallows

**Phantasms and Memories**

Vin Tanner never put much stock in dreams.

The People did. He learned enough during his time among them to know they thought dreams and visions were messages from the spirits, important messages, messages to guide the destiny of a man or a nation. Trouble was, as far as Vin could tell, the spirits had trouble getting their ideas across. They all spoke their mind in complicated visions that Vin couldn't get the sense of. Seemed like if it wasn't complicated, it wasn't a message from the spirits, which just never made much sense to Vin. To Vin's mind, if a body, be he man or spirit, had something important that needed saying, he ought to just speak it plain and be done with it. None of this beating 'round the bush. 

Now the white folk, they had their own crazy beliefs on that score. Vin knew for a fact there were some stories in the Bible about dreams that could tell the future. But the God of Israel didn't seem to be able to get his ideas across any better than the spirits of the People. From what Vin could recall, ol' Pharaoh himself couldn't make heads or tails out of the dreams God sent him until he hired some feller to interpret for him. Guess for white folks, only special people had the power—or maybe just the nerve—to say they knew what dreams were about.

All those complicated signs and symbols seemed silly to Vin. That was because most of Vin's own dreams, the ones he could remember anyway, tended to be plain as day and bold as brass. They sure as hell weren't portents of the future neither. 

But sometimes they did get tiresome.

Like now, for instance, lying in his own bedroll staring up at the canvas above him and still feeling the tatters of that damn dream dissolving away in his head. It wasn't the dream that bothered him. Dreams can't hurt you. He learned that when he was still just a boy. 

Vin had had this dream before. He didn't have it often. Just enough to recognize it when it came and to be thoroughly sick of it by the time he shook it off.

This was the part he despised, this oily puddle of niggling little questions and familiar doubts left behind for him to muddle over now that he was awake.

The dream itself wasn't always the same. Just the people in it. And the see-sawing back and forth in his gut. 

This time it was Tascosa and a bounty hunter. This time, Vin was the one trussed up and driven head on toward the "justice" that awaited him. He'd barely had to look at the bounty hunter to recognize him. Better he didn't look too close anyway. The features were never very clear. They got all muddled up with faces and people from Vin's memories. Sometimes even friends. About the only thing that ever was clear was a store-bought blue shirt and a sleek Stetson hat.

This time the man in the dream read the name off the warrant without a hint of emotion or expression. 

"Says here you're Vin Tanner. Wanted for Murder."

The name was important. 

But the reactions to it changed. Most of the time, the name meant something to the man. And Vin never knew whether he wanted it to or not. 

Sometimes there was a sign of surprise. Sometimes the man burbled up regrets with his recognition. Sometimes the man laughed with joy. Sometimes he stretched his arms toward Vin with hope all over his face.

Vin woke up resenting the hell out of that. 

Worse yet when the man denied everything or begged forgiveness, like somehow it was all Vin's fault and left him to lie awake again with the same old doubts creeping in about what he'd done. 

But worst of all, were the times the man laughed in mockery, like it was some great funny joke. "You come all this way expectin' something else?"

It filled Vin with a cold killing fury. And sometimes he woke up still feeling it. 

Total lack of recognition was easier to accept. 

You can't question a man who just doesn’t remember what you're askin' him about.

Vin didn't have any questions anyway. He'd run out of questions years ago. By now he knew he was only dreaming, and no matter what the People thought, there wasn't any point in askin' questions of a shade, a phantasm, a picture in his imagination. So he just waited it out.

This time, on awakening, he appreciated the blank nothing that he felt. But now that he'd been staring at the wooden ribs and canvas cover of his wagon for a bit, maybe that nothing was as bad as the resentment or the fury. 

The real trouble was the man in the blue shirt was only mostly a dream. 

The rest of him was mostly lies. 

Vin didn't blame his mama for the lies. Not really. She married into a fine family. The name Tanner meant something to her.

She just married the wrong one.

She married the handsome one, the charming one, all clever and fine, and the smartest man she ever knew. And oh could he laugh! That was the legend she repeated in Vin's ear. That was what she wanted him to hold on to when she told him to remember he was a Tanner. 

Truth was she should have married the dull one. He would have stuck around when his big schemes fell through. Wouldn't have left Vin's mama to cope with little ones, and people demanding money, and the fever all on her own. 

To Vin's mind, wasn't much of a man who didn't stick it out when he was needed most. Wasn't much of a man who turned his back on his own family.

Vin's mama, bless her, hadn't wanted her boy to know that. She painted his daddy up all pretty. 

But he found out the truth all right, sitting in that fine house, feeling like he didn't belong there. After his mama had followed the littlest ones right into the grave, a neighbor brought him there. 

The white-haired lady who said to call him Grandmother and the big uncle man with the flattened nose argued a lot about what to do with Vin. Most of the time, they talked like he wasn't even in the room. And most of the time he listened like he had every right to hear, which, Vin had realized much later, he did. Besides for all their arguing and all their money, it didn't work out the way anybody in that room had wanted. Or any way they could have foreseen.

Vin wasn't the kind of man to sit and brood over all the ways Fate or God, if you prefer, had done him wrong. Wasn't like you could go an' complain somewhere and get it changed. For good or bad, the past was the past. What was done was done, and no amount of wishin’ was gonna change it.

To Vin's mind, a man would do better to pay attention to what's happening around him right now in the present. A memory—no matter how good or bad—couldn't shoot worth a damn or keep you warm or keep you safe. And it sure as hell couldn't jump you out of a blind spot and end you. But some feller you didn't notice 'cause you were too busy broodin' on yesterday or last week to pay attention, sure as hell might put you in an early grave. 

A breeze flapped the edge of the canvas, and Vin kicked his feet out of his bedroll. Today was already beginning. Best get out to it and leave the dreams be. 

Dreams never showed him the truth anyway. 

But he didn't need them to. 

He knew the truth well enough.

He'd brought that man in the blue shirt in on a bounty. Years ago now. Wanted by four rich men, all of 'em mad as wet hens, and fifty grubby-faced men with calloused hands, all lookin' a little bit desperate. Seemed like the four men put money into a "sound business venture" and the fifty men did all the hard work, but the man with the ideas and the promises packed up all the money and ran off without payin' any of 'em. 

Vin had only listened to the story with half an ear. He was too busy looking at the sketch in his hands. 

"Yeah, I know the man," was all Vin said. 

He tracked that man down like some rogue buffalo, just the way he was taught. He snuck up on him like he was a fine antlered buck. The way Vin took the man completely by surprise would have made any warrior proud. Vin counted it as coup.

The man was good at running away. That much Vin knew. He wasn't giving him any chances. 

"You Coulton Davis Tanner?" It was a formality. But he held up the warrant.

The man was still handsome. The face was older and looked a little haggard, but Vin could see Uncle and Grandmother in the features before him as plain as if they were standing right there. 

The man stared at Vin funny-like. "Do I know you?" he finally asked.

Vin couldn't help grinning a little when he answered. He'd waited a long time for this chance. "Name's Tanner. Vin Tanner."

He watched with satisfaction as the man's blue eyes widened. It took two tries for him to get out his next words, his tongue as firmly tied as the hands he raised up in helpless consternation.

"It just can't be!" the man said, and a broad smile broke out across his face. "Don't you know me, boy?" he asked in wonder. 

Vin had the satisfaction of watching hope flare up in the man's face. He laughed a laugh with a deep current of music down in it, like Mama said. 

"Damn," the man exhaled and squinted at Vin, eyes crinkling up at the corners and deep dimples beside a broad infectious smile. 

"I don't know how I could have missed it." He shook his head, his voice softened with amazement. "I can see your ma in you, same as if she were standin' right here."

Vin let his own grin spread right across his face and looked perfectly steadily into those familiar features when he answered.

"Well she ain't." He pulled the ropes tighter and pushed the man toward the waiting horse. "And I don't know you."

Vin took Coulton Davis Tanner back to that town, turned him over to the sheriff and collected his due from four angry rich men. 

Then he rode out.

Never saw him again, except now and again in dreams.

But there was no point in asking questions of dreams. He could have asked all the questions he liked when the man was standing in front of him. But answers to questions don't change the past neither. 

And Vin told that man the truth—which was a better turn than the man had done him or his ma.

So, Vin considered, eyeing the pink clouds on the horizon and the few familiar figures already up and moving around town, maybe a man can only run for so long before his past catches him. But it'll catch you right here in the present when you ain't looking.

Vin put stock in guns and truth and what he could see and hear with his own eyes and ears. By the time he took his first steps out into the awakening town, the dream was gone from his mind and his memory like the faded phantasm it was.

No, Vin Tanner didn't put much stock in messages from dreams.

In the cold light of day, dreams don't change a damn thing.


End file.
